Word to the Wise
Monday, July 27, 2015 - Monday in the 17th Week in Ordinary Time
[Exod 32:15-24, 30-34 and Matt 13:31-35]'Make us a god to be our leader; as for the man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not what has happened to him.' [Exodus]
The problem is an ancient one. If the god you have isn't "meeting your needs," design one that will! Aaron's lame excuse was that the people gave him their gold "and I threw it into the fire, and this calf came out." Moses was forgotten. Covenant? What covenant? The story of God's plan of salvation includes the fundamental sin of idolatry, which would plague the Jews right up to and after the time of Jesus. It would plague the new Christian community right up till the time Constantine legalized Christianity, and it plagues us now!
One way I hear this expressed is that "a religion is a good thing to have." Thing? "Oh I'm a spiritual person. I'm just not religious!" Spiritual? Consumer-style faith amounts to idolatry because it makes faith a commodity with contents of one's own design. There are "golden calves" all around us. They make no inconvenient moral demands or require any profound thoughts. If they stop meeting our needs, we can put them in our "spiritual garages" along with all the others.
The story of the golden calf is not some quaint ancient event. The temptation to create gods of our own design goes back to Adam and Eve in the garden. In our own day, it is a good thing to hear the Old Testament story of God's plan and examine our own "plans" to see where we stand. AMEN
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